Formal Policies, Emergency Procedure Plans Now The Norm, In Addition To Desks And Cameras

Building security has changed dramatically in the decade following the 9/11 attacks, and David Jakubowski has a rare perspective on how it unfolded in downtown Hartford.

His first day of work in the city as the manager of one of downtown's tallest buildings: Sept. 11, 2001.

Jakubowski, then 30, had arrived in Hartford at 7:30 a.m. After filling out new employee paperwork, Jakubowski settled into his office on the 15th floor of 280 Trumbull Street, a 28-story office tower.

His wife — still in Atlanta where Jakubowski had previously managed a 60-story office complex — called at 9 a.m. to ask him if he was all right. He rushed to find a television.

Jakubowski hadn't met his staff, much less the building's tenants. But at 10:30 a.m., he ordered a lockdown of the building.

"Everyone was asking what we were going to do," said Jakubowski, who is now general manager of State House Square and Connecticut River Plaza. "There was anxiety about the uncertainty of what was going on. There were 1,400 people in the building. There was no plan off the shelf."

Building owners in those days knew they had to have a security desk and maybe some cameras, but not much more.

Ten years later, that situation would be unheard of. Virtually every office building has an emergency plan and most employees take it seriously. Security has become integral to operations, with investments often running into tens of thousands at a clip.

"Now, building owners and tenants have a more defined security policy than we did in the past," said Marty Schwager, group manager of property management at Jones Lang LaSalle in Hartford. "Landlords and tenants have put together formal procedures and policies. There is much more documentation."

Before the 9/11 attacks, Jakubowski said, written security procedures in most buildings in both Hartford and elsewhere encompassed a paragraph or two. Today, those procedures have ballooned to a dozen pages or more, he said.

In the weeks after 9/11, all sorts of stepped-up security measures appeared in Hartford, spurred not only by the attacks but by mailings of anthrax. Downtown Hartford got a scare two weeks after the attacks in New York and Washington when a transformer explosion at the old Civic Center on Trumbull Street sent a column of smoke over the city — stoking panic and rumors of a terrorist bombing.

Three months after the attacks, State House Square tenant ING Group told the building's owners that they would need to install electronic security turnstiles at the Main Street entrance. The initial cost was about $100,000, and the system has been upgraded since. The turnstiles require employees to swipe their badges to pass, while visitors must get clearance to pass and reach elevators.

Employee swipe cards that can track who is in a building at any time and security cameras — now smaller and cheaper than they were a decade ago — have become ingrained in office building culture and a cornerstone of protecting workers.

And it's big business. Two global companies based in Metro Hartford — Stanley Black & Decker and United Technologies Corp. — have built up large security divisions over the last decade. On Friday, Stanley announced it had completed the $1.2 billion acquisition of a Swedish security firm.

Certainly some security measures have eased, such as beefed up staffs of security guards in lobbies. But one that has not lost its prominence: evacuation planning, reinforced by the images and stories of workers trapped in the World Trade Center towers and how it was unclear whether they should leave the building.

"What we now have are more frequent fire drills and people take them more seriously," said Jonathan K. Putnam, a commercial real estate broker at Cushman & Wakefield in Hartford.

Before the attacks, it was common for employees to ignore drills, closing their doors or ducking down in their cubicles and commenting, "I know where the stairwell is."

"After, everything changed because people were sobered to what could happen," Putnam said. "People became conscious of the way you can try to improve the outcome without panicking."

At 242 Trumbull Street, for example, Gwen Smith Iloani, CEO of Smith Whiley & Co., changed her view after the attacks. "Now when I hear the fire alarm ring at work, I take it very seriously and I make sure that all of my workers leave the building immediately," Iloani said.

Today, most emergency plans call for all employees to leave the building. In the past, plans at many high-rises called for employees to move to a lower floor, say if there was a problem on the 12th floor of a building, workers might be moved to the eighth floor.

Jakubowski said it might have taken 15 minutes to clear the workers out of State House Square five years ago. In the most recent drill two months ago, the 850,000-square-foot complex with two-, 14-story towers was cleared in eight minutes, he said.

This week's report of a possible bomb threat against New York and Washington prompted Jakubowski to reach for his manual of emergency plans. He wouldn't put them into place unless there was a heightened threat against smaller cities or the East Coast, he said.

Even after 10 years, the memory of the tragedy is still fresh, Jakubowski said.

"There are 3,000 people in this building, and I'm responsible for their safety and well-being," Jakubowski said. "The images that everyone carries around who lived through 9/11 don't go away."